Static
by Zamiel
Summary: It doesn't really feel like we're alive. Pre-Hellsing Jan & Luke Valentine oneshot.


Static-Zamiel

Pre-Hellsing Jan & Luke Valentine. Oneshot hastily written as an experiment. Brownie points if you know what movie this is inspired from.

Special thanks to both Gerrys—I should've said goodbye when I had the chance.

I.

The feel of summer is sticky between his fingers, the stench putrid and rank beneath his arms. He toys with the notion of falling, imagining the vast empty space and the inevitable rush of gravity before shaking his head loose of ghosts. His palms are wet with perspiration and his fingers slither on the iron, nearly breaking his steadfast grip on the balcony bar as he neatly vaults the rail until there is nothing but a small ledge separating him from the concrete ten stories down. He waits for some semblance of feeling to regurgitate but Time is reduced to stagnation, swallowing him whole. The tickle of a fly's legs brushing across the top of his knuckles is the only indication of movement.

_It doesn't really feel like we're alive_.

"Alright, Jan?"

He eyes Ben contemptuously – Ben, whose feet never strayed from the vicinity of safety. "Pussy," spits Jan under his breath, the "s" sharply tossed from the pinnacle of his tongue. Ben's face reddens slightly before he issues the next command with a strained voice.

"One!"

Jan claps once, as does Gerry and Jaimie, their hands popping off the bar for that brief spasm of applause, their heels swaying backwards. They each catch hold of the bar before the ground can claim their bodies.

"Two!"

Their claps—twice each this time—smatter and collide in the air. Jaimie sucks in a breath when his palm nearly slides off the rail; Jan continues to eye Ben predatorily, his previous taunt heavily embedded in the gaze. Ben silently observes their flirtation with death, hesitating before calling the next.

"Three!"

"You're scared of it, aren't you, Ben?" says Jan, clapping thrice before reclaiming the bar. "You can't make yourself do it, can you?" His voice is even but tension seems to settle like a mantle, or a noose, across Ben's shoulders – the boy is suddenly unable to look his friends in the eye as he issues the next number. By the time Eight is called, Jaimie's hands are slipping again, a film of perspiration dotting his upper lip. His breaths are ragged and uneven, the weight of each one pressing against the air, almost too intrusive and vulgar to be real.

II.

It is two hours later and already the memory of the balcony game is like a dream. Jan's fingers are peppered with chalk dust as he doodles lazily across the board; Gerry is speaking to him animatedly and Jan pays him the dimmest corner of his attention, his eyes raking over Jaimie who has his head down on the desk, and Ben who sits tight-lipped off to the side.

"—that's the same chick who managed to draw a gigantic dick in the middle of her art assignment-"

"Uh huh." Jan's chalkpiece loops around, creating sloppy hurricanes that thread through Mrs. Brenner's neat-faced equations as if purging the sight of them off the face of the blackboard. He tries to ignore the urgency of the itch pressing against his mouth, shunting it to the side of his brain. The chalk digs into the board, its white body shattering into dust and small jagged stones that clatter to the floor like teeth.

"—she did, she just made it look like it was the trunk, y'know-"

The itch amplifies, snarling through Jan's veins as a sudden hunger envelopes him. Grimacing, he lodges the chalk at Ben, whose startled eyes observe the missile a second too late. "Shit," mutters Jan out the side of his mouth. "I'm going for a smoke."

"Brenner's going to be back…"

"Yeah. Whatever." Jan unearths a pack of cigarettes from his blazer pocket and sticks one in his mouth where it droops, giving him a look of perpetual displeasure. "I hate this cheap shit." He turns once on his heels and exits the door.

III.

"Why do you do that?"

The words hurtle and puncture through the silence; Jan jumps at the sound, dropping his lighter and nearly singeing his fingers.

"F-fuck you," he retorts automatically, the words clumsily knocking around his teeth. He strains his eyes in the dark bathroom until he is sure the voice belonged to Luke. When he is sure, he inhales a steady stream of smoke, releasing it into the air where it curls around lethargically like some ethereal beast before retorting again. "Fuck you." The words sound too composed this time, too tame. Suddenly hating himself for sounding stupid, and hating Luke even more for single-handedly revealing this stupidity, he spits out the phrase again with all the vehemence he can dredge up. "Fuck you."

He can sense the corners of Luke's mouth creep up. "How many more times are you going to say it?"

"However many times I fucking want."

"Sit next to me."

Jan obeys, shuffling once foot in front of the other in his idiosyncratic, unsynchronized manner before plopping himself down. The tiles feel clammy and dank beneath his fingers, the coldness seeping through the fabric of his school uniform and making his skin crawl. The intervallic glow of ash when he inhales briefly lights his face, creating long, tapering shadows beneath his eyes and mouth. "It smells like shit in here."

Luke's smile wanly bleeds across his mouth. "I've got news for you—"

"Yeah, yeah." Jan shrugs it aside with a wave of his hand, letting Luke paw through his pockets for a cig. "Lean over," he says suddenly when he observes Luke struggling with the lighter. "That thing's a piece of crap."

Luke leans over, his cigarette clenched between his teeth. The tips of their cigs touch, the orange-red embers of Jan's slowly coaxing Luke's into being. "The hell you doing here?" Jan mutters when Luke is finally able to exhale a lungful of swirling smoke. The embers fall on his arms, briefly stinging his skin before going black and dead. Their shadows arch against the stall doors like monstrous caricatures, creatures from alternate dimensions of reality.

"I wanted to get away." Luke tilts his head back against the bathroom tiles, dispelling smoke, a factory. He fingers the weight of the silence between them, save for Jan's breathing and decides to speak before the question decays. "Hey," he says crassly. "Why do you do that?"

"What?"

"You know what."

"What? Smoking? Ditching? Jacking off? What the hell you talking about?"

"That clapping game on the roof of the school, dumbass."

This time it's Jan who smiles, the grin scuttling through his lips as his eyes close like he is meditating. "Ben can't do it," he murmurs to himself monotonously, grinding his cigarette butt on the tiles, his fingers squeezing what's left of it into a pulp. He slowly drags his hand across the ground, leaving a trial of ash and small dried leaves like entrails ripped from the main body. "He's too chickenshit to even jump the rail. Gerry can get up to nine claps. I think I can go all the way up to ten if I try. Maybe there's a certain number you hit that gets upped every time you push against it."

Luke flicks his cigarette stub across the floor where it rolls into a stall. "I saw you do it. You got up to nine." His voice is suddenly heavy.

"It doesn't feel like you're alive at all, once you're up there…"

"And now? When you're not up there, do you feel any more alive?"

Jan doesn't answer, positioning the question between them as a buffer as he gingerly rises to his feet. "Brenner's waiting," he mutter between his teeth, through leaden lips of a porcelain doll newly emerged from the kiln. "Gotta go." For some reason, he stands in place after his own benediction, regarding Luke with an emotionless, cryptic expression slathered across his face until his brother likewise rises to his feet, returning the cold stare blow-for-blow.

"We do it because we're trash," answers Jan at last and then he wonders if the words actually came from his mouth. It was probably just his imagination.

Luke's fingers snag his brother's sleeve, holding him still for a second before his hand is shrugged off. "What if I can make it better?"

Jan's eyes narrow. "Make _what_ better?"

He tersely waits for an answer; when none is thrown his way, he relaxes, his shoulders sinking almost audibly back into place. He halfway expects Luke to follow him but the only footsteps he hears are his own, the familiar shuffle of worn-out sneakers against the tiles like a muffled heartbeat. Before he reaches the door, Gerry throws it wide open.

"Ben did it," Gerry says breathlessly, one hand clutching the front of his blazer as if he is in pain. "He just did it. He went up and threw himself off and clapped the whole way. Fourteen claps before his skull cracked open. You couldn't do that."

Jan feels Luke's eyes bore through the back of his head as if searching for something he'd rather be left forgotten. And before his brother can reach it and unearth it altogether, he shuffles out into the hall, letting the door swing shut behind him. It swings three times on its hinges before it is still.


End file.
